Carol Vogel: Palestinian-American Wins Hugo Boss Prize

Emily Jacir, the 37-year-old artist of Palestinian descent who produces photographs, videos, sculpture and drawings that address themes of belonging and displacement as they relate to Palestinian identity, has won this year’s Hugo Boss Prize.

The $100,000 award, established in 1996 by the Guggenheim Museum and named for the German men’s wear company that sponsors it, is given every two years for significant achievement in contemporary art.

The other finalists this year were two Swiss artists, Christoph Büchel and Roman Signer; two Americans, Patty Chang and Sam Durant; and the Danish artist Joachim Koester.

Artist Emily Jacir. (Photo by Sarah Shatz 2008)

Ms. Jacir, who divides her time between Ramallah, a town on the West Bank, and New York, won the Golden Lion Award for an artist under 40 at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Her work there, a room-size installation in the Italian pavilion, documented the assassination of the Palestinian intellectual Wael Zwaiter by Israeli agents in Rome in 1972 for what they believed was his role in the massacre of Israeli athletes at that year’s Summer Olympics. Using photographs, objects, texts and interviews, she created a narrative that reflects on her own anguish over the Middle East.